Hello, I found this site a little while ago, and registered for the forum.  There is a ton of great information here.  So I thought maybe someone here might be able to shed some light on something.  I use King Arthur white whole wheat flour fairly often, and I recently restocked.  As soon as I touched the flour, I realized it was a much coarser grind than this type of flour has had in the past.  It surprised me because KAF has always been very consistent in the past.  Has anyone else noticed this or heard anything?  It seems unlikely to be just a fluke of the bag that I got,

Hello,

With the help of folks on this forum, I've been perfecting a South-Beach-friendly whole-wheat bread recipe (ie., using no sugar or white flour). The ingredients and procedure I'm using now can be found at:

     http://bmbmisc.home.comcast.net/bread_2.html

The resulting loaves are tasty and have a nice, although heavy, texture.

I've read elsewhere that a couple of TABLEspoons of vital wheat gluten are recommended per cup of whole wheat flour. As the link above shows, the recipe I'm using calls for much less.

If I want a somewhat lighter loaf with more of a rise to it, would it make sense to experiment with more wheat gluten? What do you think?

Thanks,
Bill

i did my first recipe from peter reinharts whole grain bread book and i'm very pleased with it. this is the most oven spring i've gotten on a free form bread to date.  i am not allowing anyone to cut into it until completely cool....this could take a while.

On a regular basis, any bread that I bake that requires a 200+ internal temperature reading NEVER reaches the temperature which it supposed to. The obvious reason is bad measuring tool. Can't use that excuse because I've tried three thermometers now. Now I'm using the CDN digital "quick read" with the highest recommendation from Cook's Illustrated. It has a max reading well over 400. I've tried the probe that came with my oven, along with other probe style thermometers.

Today I was baking an, albeit large, loaf (in a pan) of 75% whole wheat/25% white/other. The recommended goal was 205. I ended up baking it twice as long as recommended, never reading above 197. This is the common top-out. I have a brand new GE electric convection oven (came with the new house) that isn't a dog, but not a professional quality, either. Just a basic reliable oven that cooks evenly.

I've tried placing pans on top of my cooking stone. I've tried using the convection. I've tried higher temps, lower temps for longer, etc.

Our elevation is around 2600. Could this account for this much of a disparity?

BTW, the bread never tastes raw...always good. I'm just more curious than anything...

another 'a blessing of bread' recipe from maggie glezer. whole wheat apple challah. i baked one this afternoon and am letting the other rise in the refrigerator for 24 hours. this is supposed to enhance the flavor......it will be baked fresh right before erev rosh hashanah!

i think i let it overproof somewhat.....i didn't get a much of an oven spring.....not quite sure.....but the taste is very good nonetheless 

i think this one will be gone shortly! 

here is a picture of a slice (apoligizes for the unsharp picture but i don't have a great digital camera....

I bought this book a couple of months ago because the recipes looked so enticing. I've used Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book for many years and have always achieved very good results from her recipes and techniques. But, I wanted some new whole grain recipes and got pretty excited after reviewing the table of contents in the Reinhart book.

After making a few loaves from the Reinhart book, I'm perplexed and vaguely dissatisfied. The Reinhart breads seem much denser than Laurel's, and some of them have a sour, off-flavor. I've been able to achieve lighter loaves by kneading much longer than the recipes call for - like, 15 minutes instead of 4 minutes. Also, by using water in the soakers instead of milk, the sour flavor seems to have been alleviated.

My question is: do the techniques in the Reinhart book really produce better whole wheat bread than the traditional breadmaking methods? Is it really worth it to go through the prefermentation steps? Any feedback is truly appreciated. Or maybe someone can direct me to a book with updated whole grain recipes and traditional techniques. Thanks!

Hi,My wife and I recently started on the South Beach Diet, so I wanted to find a recipe for a bread that follows that diet (i.e., whole wheat flour and no sugar). I found one at http://www.yumyum.com/recipe.htm?ID=19364.

But I wanted to use the “hybrid” method I’ve used successfully with bread-machine mixes, which is to have the bread machine knead and initially rise the dough; and then move the dough to a regular loaf pan, re-rise it, and bake it in a conventional oven.

Unfortunately, while the resulting bread is tasty, I have yet to make a loaf that isn’t flat on the top. Also, the bread’s texture tends to be a bit gummy, instead of crumbly.

To see a picture of the results and a detailed list of the ingredients and procedure I used, go to http://bmbmisc.home.comcast.net/bread.html

Any suggestions on how to get the bread to rise so that the loaf is more rounded and to make the texture less gummy would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Bill

I used to make a 100% whole wheat sandwich bread from a white flour recipe I adapted. It had a low hydration, and was prepared in the classical mix-knead-rise-shape-rise-bake. Sometimes I would add other grains to this basic recipe. My loaves were rather dense, and often they would not rise very much. I think I may have overworked the dough in an effort to get that elusive window pane. BUT they tasted great!

Then I learned about whole wheat and hydration, plus a few "new" tricks that I thought would help me get bigger, lighter loaves. So recently I've been baking 100% whole wheat at 70-75% hydration, doing an autolyse, and using the refrigerator for 18 hour ferments with about 3 stretch and fold sessions thrown in. My loaves came out much higher and lighter. BUT I noticed 2 things: first, a very noticeable bitter taste which I never had before, and secondly, a "crumbly" crumb that would barely hold a slice of bread together.

Can anyone help me explain this? I might mention also that my original recipe called for 2 tbsp of instant yeast. I reduced this to 1 1/2 tbsp in view of the long ferment, but maybe it was still too much? Because the dough would still rise rather fast even in the fridge, and each time I did a stretch and fold I'd have to de-gas the dough so it might have risen too many times.

Hi there.  I've been wondering what makes wheat bread you buy at the store so soft and tender.  I prefer to bake whole wheat bread, though I'm absolutely awestruck with the multigrain struan recipe in BBA.  The whole wheat breads I bake are only soft and tender right after I bake them and they dry out by the next morning, necessitating toasting to make it palatable to my children. I'm assuming that the store bought breads are this way because of preservatives, but not sure how far fetched this is.  If it's possible to maintain this tenderness for longer - a method or storage method?

 Thanks very much!

Molly

How does one strengthen the crumb on a bread recipe?  I always thought that the kneading phase of the recipe was where that happened.  Is that correct?  The following recipe is fine but my bread crumb keeps coming out without enough backbone or strength.  Can you advise?

Soaker (note: he also does it as biga)

Whole-Wheat Poolish of a thick paste consistency. (note: he also does it as biga)

Dough